Accessing Socialist and Post-Socialist Memory through Oral History

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

This panel explores how scholars use oral history methods to access socialist and post-socialist memories. The papers focus on the experiences of several individual communities: the last generation of children born in the former Yugoslavia, survivors of Bulgaria’s socialist-era forced-labor camps and prisons, and Bulgarian immigrants in the United States. While interviews are at the core of each paper, the presenters also share innovative and interdisciplinary approaches that incorporate place, space, and physical objects as a component of their oral history methodology. Taken as a whole, this panel interrogates how socialist and post-socialist memory is produced and how it can be narrated.

Sub Unit

• History: Since 1990

Chair

• Jeff Hayton, Wichita State U

Papers

• The Youngest Yugoslavs: An Oral History of Post-Socialist Memory - Jovana Babovic, SUNY Geneseo

• Can Art Narrate Silenced Narratives: Staging Oral History Interviews at the 2024 Venice Biennale - Lilia Topouzova, U of Toronto (Canada)

• Memories of Socialism in the Immigrant’s Suitcase - Dilyana P. Ivanova Zieske, The Field Museum

Discussant

• Jeff Sahadeo, Carleton U (Canada)